Judging by the home page of today’s Reach plc Daily Post/North Wales Live title, one could be led to believe that human trafficking and forced marriage are alive and well in Talybont north of Abermaw/Barmouth in Gwynedd.
However, it is only when one reads the article that it is revealed that brown envelopes of cash have been proffered, not marriageable women.
The front page has since been amended.
The world’s top greenwashing event COP27 is currently taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.
To give an idea of the under-achievement of previous UN conferences on climate change, it’s worth pointing out that activist Greta Thunberg is boycotting the event, stating that it will be an opportunity for “greenwashing, lying and cheating“. Greta is famously critical of politicians as her “blah, blah, blah” speech showed.
Anyway, in anticipation of a lack of any serious commitments and outcomes from the world’s political elite allegedly having a conferenceshores of the Red Sea, here’s a reminder from the past, in the shape of Ronnie Barker’s Ministry of Pollution sketch from the second season of The Two Ronnies, first aired in 1972.
Your ‘umble scribe likes to think he was properly brought up: polite, courteous, not swearing people, particularly women, and such like. As regards swearing, his sister has more than once revealed that when she and my late father were on a bus once, he admonished fellow passengers for swearing because women were present.
As regards swearing, step forward over-promoted former fireplace salesman “Sir” Gavin Alexander Williamson CBE MP, the dishonourable member for South Staffordshire who has been inexplicably elevated to cabinet rank (again!) as Minister of State without Portfolio, who appears to have been taught and abide by completely different standards of social conduct to those of your correspondent.
News has emerged over the weekend that Williamson sent ‘expletive-laden’ text messages to the then Conservative chief whip Wendy Morton all moaning about not being invited to attend the late queen’s funeral.
According to the messages published by today’s Sunday Times, Williamson accused Morton of exploiting the Queen’s death for political purposes, particularly as he was out of favour at the time with the English Empire’s shortest serving ever prime minister, one Elizabeth Mary Truss, now safely removed from high office and returned to the back benches.
The actual words quoted by the press reveal that Williamson has a fine command of monosyllabic swear words having their roots in Old English (which some still call Anglo-Saxon. Ed.), particularly ones beginning with f and s.
Not only did Williamson use foul language towards a woman, but this morning his cabinet colleague Oliver Dowden (also inexplicably honoured with a CBE like Williamson. Ed.)defended Williamson on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme, claiming Williamson’s offensive text messages were sent ‘in the heat of the moment‘.
I blame both of their sets of parents.
On a walk into town on Sunday in bright sunshine, you ‘umble scribe encountered a visitor to the River Frome in the inner city (where it’s also known at the Danny. Ed.) near the Peel Street bridge – a juvenile grey heron.
According to the RSPB, grey herons can be seen around any kind of water – garden ponds, lakes, rivers and even on estuaries.
The one pictured above was seen in close proximity to a stretch of the Danny frequented by a small shoal of roach, so perhaps it was after one (or more) of them.
In addition to fish, grey herons will also consume small birds such as ducklings, small mammals like voles and amphibians.
The disgraced former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, one Matthew John David Hancock, has lost the Conservative Party whip for agreeing to take part in trash TV show I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, The Guardian reports.
Tory chief whip Simon Hart is quoted as saying, “Following a conversation with Matt Hancock, I have considered the situation and believe this is a matter serious enough to warrant suspension of the whip with immediate effect”.
The dictionary definition of a celebrity is someone who is famous, especially in areas of entertainment such as films, music, writing, or sport. Unless politics has become a branch of the entertainment business, classifying Hancock as a celebrity is a tad far-fetched, even though politics has previously been described as show business for ugly people.
Your ‘umble scribe would contend that Hancock is no celebrity. However, what he does have is notoriety, particularly from his term of office as health secretary. In June 2021, after it was shown he had breached COVID-19 social distancing restrictions by kissing and embracing an aide, Gina Coladangelo, in his Whitehall office, Hancock resigned as Health Secretary, having been caught not only cheating on his wife, but also breaking his own social distancing rules. At the time Ms Coladangelo was a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. She was also an old college friend of Hancock’s from his time studying PPE at Exeter College, Oxford.
However, Ms Coladangelo’s appointment to the DHSC is not the only example of Hancock’s cronyism. There was the revelation of his ownership of shares in a family company used by the NHS, not to mention the award of an NHS contract to a neighbour. Furthermore, Hancock is the member of parliament for the West Suffolk constituency, which includes Newmarket, capital of the country’s horse-racing business. One of the reasons the pandemic took such a strong hold in the country was the delay in locking the country down, which allowed such superspreader events as the traditional March Cheltenham Festival to take place.
Of course, Hancock is not the first MP to be lured onto I’m A Celebrity. There was of course the notoriously useless Right Dishonourable Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, one Nadine Vanessa Dorries. Dorries also famously lost the whip for appearing on the show (where she famously ate ostrich anus in the bushtucker challenge. Ed.), apparently for committing the ultimate discourtesy of not informing the whips’ office of her absence from Halitosis Hall. However, this disciplinary action did not do much to dent her career prospects as she was subsequently and inexplicably elevated to the cabinet position of Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by disgraced former alleged party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
Come the next election, will the good burghers of West Suffolk decide that Hancock belongs on a show entitled He’s A Calamity… Get Him Out Of Here!?
Update 5/11/22: Hancock’s decision to take part in the show and leave his constituents without parliamentary representation while he earns a fat fee – rumoured in the media to be £350-400K – in addition to his £84,144 p.a. salary as an MP has not gone down well with some constituents, The Guardian reports.
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser first introduced in 2008. Based largely on the open source Chromium browser, perhaps the best description for it is proprietary freeware.
French IT news website Le Monde Informatique reports that a federal judge in California is examining complaints against Google alleging that the company is tricking users into believing that their private life is protected when using the browser’s incognito mode. The lawsuit which was initiated before the North California District Court more than 2 years ago by 5 users is now awaiting a more recent petition from these plaintiff in a class action. One of the complaints concerns Chrome users with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code and who were browsing in incognito mode; a second covers all users of Safari, Edge and Internet Explorer with a Google account who accessed a non-Google website containing Google tracking or advertising code in private browsing mode. According to legal documents first disclosed by Bloomberg, Google employees joked about the browser’s incognito mode and the fact that it was not really private. They also took the company to task for not having done more to provide users with the privacy they though they were enjoying.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who presides over the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, will decide whether the tens of thousands of users of Chrome’s incognito mode can be grouped together to seek statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per violation, which could potentially increase the fine to over $5 bn. The definition of the word incognito is to disguise or conceal one’s identity. The confidentiality settings of web browsers are intended to delete local traces of sites visited by a user, as well as web searches and information provided when filling in online forms. Simply put, private modes such as incognito are not supposed to track and record data from web searches and sites visited by users. Google is also facing proceedings linked to user confidentiality from the justice ministers and public prosecutors of several federal states including Texas, the District of Columbia and Washington. Earlier this month Google settled a lawsuit filed by the attorney general of Arizona for $85 mn. Initially filed in June 2020, the class action was asking for at least $5 bn., accusing Google of surreptitiously collecting data on what people were viewing online and where they were browsing despite using private browsing mode. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say they have a large number of internal Google emails proving that managers have known for years that private browsing mode does not do what it claims. When a user chooses to use this incognito mode, Google’s browser is supposed to delete browsing history and cookies automatically at the end of a session.
The plaintiffs, who are Google Account holders, alleged that the search engine collected their data, distributed it and sold it for targeted advertising through a real-time auction system (RTB). LThe plaintiffs allege that even in incognito mode, Google can see what sites Chrome users are visiting and collect data by means which include Analytics, digital fingerprinting techniques, concurrent applications and processes on a user’s device and AdManager. The latter is a Google service enabling businesses to distribute and create web, mobile and video advertising reports for a company.
According to one report, more than 70% of all website use one of more of Google’s services. More specifically, the plaintiffs allege that every time a user with private browsing mode active visits a website running Analytics or AdManager, the search giant’s software scripts on the site surreptitiously order the user’s browser to send a secret separate message to its servers in California. “Google learns exactly what content the user’s browser software was asking the website to display, and it also passes a header containing the URL information of what the user viewed and requested online. Device IP address, geolocation data and user ID are all tracked and logged by Google”, according to one report in the lawsuit. “Once collected, this mountain of data is analyzed to build digital records on millions of consumers, in some cases identifying us by name, gender, age, and medical conditions and political issues we researched online”, the lawsuit claims.
In March 2021, a California judge denied 82 motions by Google’s attorneys to end the lawsuit and ruled against the company, allowing it to proceed. In July that year the company was sentenced to pay almost one million dollars in legal fees and expenses as a penalty for not having disclosed evidence concerning the lawsuit in a timely manner.
This week a spokesperson for Google told the Washington Post it had been frank with users about what its incognito mode offers in terms of privacy and that the plaintiffs “deliberately misrepresented our statements”. Jack Gold, senior analyst at J. Gold Associates, said the company makes the majority of its revenue by tracking everyone and selling ad space. “If they’re really creating a completely private browsing experience, then the revenue stream is gone,” he said. “So, I suspect there is a ‘balancing act’ going on internally as to where the borders are around privacy vs. tracking. No company builds a free browser without being able to generate revenues somehow”. The plaintiffs in the case said they chose “private browsing mode” to prevent others from learning what they’re viewing on the internet. When it comes to using Google Chrome and other browsers, “let the user beware,” Gold said. “You have to trust the maker to take care of your privacy, but it’s not always in their best interest to do so”.
p>Bristol Green Party is currently collecting signatures for a petition seeking to ban pavement parking within the city. It’s a major problem, particularly in those parts of the city where streets are narrow and footways (aka pavements. Ed.) are even narrower.
Pavement parking makes it hard to walk safely, especially for those with disabilities, those pushing prams and buggies and those with low vision. People in wheelchairs or on mobility scooters are also badly affected. On top of this, the city is supposed to be promoting what’s called active travel, i.e. walking and cycling, as opposed to the use of tinned 3-piece suites, particularly those powered by fossil fuels.
The text of the petition is as follows.
To: Bristol City Council
From: [Your Name]
We’re calling on Bristol City Council to take action on pavement parking in Bristol by:
1. Using its existing powers to ban pavement parking in Bristol now, where it can and where it’s needed; and
2. Calling on the Government to strengthen councils’ powers to ban pavement parking where bans are needed.
The security breach was discovered when Truss was campaigning for the Tory Party leadership in the summer, but was apparently hushed up on the orders of Truss’ predecessor, the equally useless disgraced alleged former party-time PM, one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has since returned to his old habits of doing no work for his long-suffering constituents in Uxbridge & South Ruislip.
It is also claimed that private conversations between Truss and her equally useless (and rapidly dismissed, serving less time in office than his boss. Ed.) Chancer of the Exchequer Kamikwasi Kwarteng criticising Johnson were also amongst the information acquired by the hackers, leaving the Britannia Unhinged duo at risk of being blackmailed. One has to wonder how much kompromat the Kremlin has on Truss, Kwarteng and other present and former members of the alleged government.
Whilst all this is highly amusing to those of us on the left of the political spectrum, one disturbing aspect is the tone of the typical official .denial that a breach has occurred. According to The Guardian, a government spokesperson is reported as having stated the following:
The government has robust systems in place to protect against cyber threats. That includes regular security briefings for ministers, and advice on protecting their personal data and mitigating cyber threats.
Robust is another of those weasel words and stock phrases trotted out by officialdom when its shortcomings have been exposed.
The adjective has two dictionary definitions, depending upon whether people/animals or objects/systems are involved:
(of a person or animal) strong and healthy: and
(of an object or system) strong and unlikely to break or fail.
The only comment your ‘umble scribe can make on that is that the security breach would not have occurred had the government’s systems been robust enough, besides adding that if security is a major concern, Suella ‘Leaky Sue’ Braverman would not have been re-appointed as Home Secretary by this month’s Prime Minister only 6 days after she had been sacked by Ms Truss for a major security breach by using a personal – not official – email account to send privileged government information to a right-wing Tory MP and accidentally copying the message to another MP’s aide, who alerted Number 10.
Today’s Bristol Post website features an article with an absolute howler, as reproduced in the screenshot below.
The section of Cheltenham Road involved is a few hundred metres of the main A38 road, running between Bodmin in Cornwall and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire.
Following some ridicule in the comments below the piece, the headline has now been corrected.
Q: When is a staff shortage not a staff shortage?
A: When the organisation involved is facing ‘workforce challenges‘. 😀
What’s wrong with plain speaking nowadays?
Answers in the comments if you have any please!